Happy last day of April! Hope you are doing well with your health, fitness, and running goals. Today we are going to cover lighting up our gear to stay safe at night, during the day, and during the next race. Recently, I reviewed the OrangeMud gear vest on the blog and let’s cover it with reflective light for the Lincoln Half Marathon (my next race). Why is the gear vest my choice for the half-marathon? It seems easier and more practical for a longer race: fill the gear vest pockets and empty mine. The hydration/straw solution for drinking with the Hydrapak is advantageous too: just seems like it will be easier than carrying bottles although that’s what I’m used to with the other OrangeMud vests. By the way, the gear vest straw can be kept up high with the shoulder fasteners for easier, more convenient dispensing of water. That puts it closer than the bottles on the back with the other vests. The liter capacity of water is a good amount for a half-marathon but I know the water will be gone by about 10k based on my experience.
Brilliant Reflective makes wonderful safety strips that can be placed on running vests, shoes, gear, clothes, water bottles, and even bikes. First before I attach the safety strips to anything I test the reflectivity in the dark. I didn’t see any on the gear vest (although frequently the OrangeMud logo is reflective) so that made this a high priority to make me more visible when I run, walk, or race with this vest.
We chose the black stick-on tape for this application and we needed to apply tape on the front and back of the vest. The BR tape comes in different colors and also includes iron-on varieties if you prefer that over the quick stick-on option. There are tiny squares of BR between strips that I have been using to place on shoes and here I did apply it to the vest also.
Taping the back of the vest is probably the easiest: I had 3 options here. I could have done vertical lines, horizontal lines, or an X-shape. Considering that I probably won’t use the cargo straps daily, I decided the X-shape would be the most visible. (If I do use the straps a lot, I will need to do some vertical or horizontal stripes to heighten the visibility.) So I placed a long row of wide strips going one direction and crossed it with a narrow long set of brilliant strips. After sealing the tape (just rub it on/press down to make sure it is affixed), it looks like this:
Above you also see the BR safety strips before I detached and separated them for application using flash camera in the dark.
We really don’t know what type of weather we will have for the Lincoln Marathon on Sunday so it’s best to be prepared for anything. (We are in a dust storm warning here as I write this, pretty unusual for our area.) I want to make sure that I can be seen for my safety and for the safety of others during the race and anytime I’m wearing this OrangeMud vest (OM~Orange Mud).
For the application on the front, I placed the two small squares in the upper nutrition pockets. The other safety strips were too long to fit there and I didn’t want to trim these.
For the larger gear pockets, I placed horizontal and vertical lines on the large and garbage pockets. So we used 4 strips on the pockets. I thought about diagonal lines but those didn’t seem to work as well with the design and size of these vest components. So this is the first running vest that I have placed the safety strips in a horizontal pattern (I’ve used vertical or diagonal on all my other applications). It seemed safer to place them both ways on this particular vest so that is why we varied the application.
The tape reflects very well after being affixed. All the photos below are taken in the dark with a flash camera to show you the reflectivity.
Want to try Brilliant Reflective? Here is their website: BrilliantReflective.com. I am a BR ambassador so let me know if you want to order and I will give you my special discount code. Also, if you want to try OrangeMud running/hydration vests, here is their website: OrangeMud.com. If you want to order a Gear Vest, use my special code “BRGV15” to save 15%. Thanks to OrangeMud and BibRave for allowing me to test and review the vest. And thank you to Brilliant Reflective for helping to keep us safe on the roads and trails. We appreciate you!
Happy healthy safe running!
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